Trump Jr. posts exchange with WikiLeaks

President Donald Trump’s oldest son released Monday a series of private Twitter exchanges between himself and WikiLeaks during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. The messages started in October 2016 when a user on the WikiLeaks Twitter account messaged Donald Trump Jr. and asked him to promote an article that included critical comments Hillary Clinton made about WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. Trump Jr. then sent a reply asking, “What’s behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?” Days later, the website started posting emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. After the emails were released, WikiLeaks sent Trump Jr. a searchable link of their contents. Trump Jr. tweeted that link two days later on Oct. 14, 2016, The Atlantic reported. In an assessment released last January, the National Security Agency, CIA, and FBI concluded Russian military intelligence provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, which the website denies. The site’s Twitter account contacted Trump Jr. several more times over the next nine months, but he never responded. His lawyers handed in the exchanges to three congressional committees investigating Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election and whether there were any links to Trump’s campaign. Trump Jr. released the messages publicly Monday and blamed one of the congressional committees for leaking the messages to The Atlantic.